Unrefined Flowers
by Kowaretasekai
Summary: She had always been merely a viewer from the side, content with watching humans and ghouls destroy one another. The way their fingers bent both ways and cracked like thin, tempered chocolate soothed a part inside of her. In the end, they were all still depraved, despicable, wicked and miserable creatures. It only made sense that her hands marked by sin were the same.
1. Chapter 1 A Secondary Character

From afar, she was only a white and wilted spider lily, spinning into different colors when she so desired as the background to a tragedy unfolding. How closely she watched the life of a young man deteriorate into one of false security and implanted memories and she wondered if it were really so long to wear that mask if a sense of fulfillment still existed. It mattered not to her if his acts and decisions were based on selfish desires; she was merely a watcher, judging and being entertained.

So it came as a personal surprise when she found herself following along the same path with her heart being puppeteered along. Looking back, it was merely an obvious consequence, for she was only human after all. But then, the spider lily became a focus rather than a symbol scattered around the stained tile floor.

Sacrifice wilted away in derision and heroism inked away in the ancient, unused dictionary. She stopped a death with a promise, not an act based on no reason. The act of gouging out another's eyes disgusted her, but more than that, it shamed her when she had put so much blind faith into the stranger who was now at the brink of death. She would not stand to watch it happen; she would judge this time. The background would become a player in the game and she would create the future out of the guise of entertainment and the inner denial of empathy.

She had been standing in front of the near dead body for a while now, staring blankly into the open space before her as though the wielder of the weapon were not there. The city scape acted as grounding ornaments, tying her attention to the reality that she rarely spared a glance. Bodies of the injured and the dead were scattered along the roads, leaking red onto the snow that prevented it from turning crusty brown. How ironic it was for her to stand there, perhaps in all her glory, like someone important—someone who drew the focus from others like water forced a drowning person to reach towards the surface.

"Who are you?" He asked softly, slowly, as though it took all the effort in the world to twist his mouth to create those sounds—as though she did not warrant words. His hand on his weapon did not tighten its grip, maintaining the relaxing and near comforting hold. It did not look like a scythe but rather a hybrid of weapons fused into one unbalanced, slightly revolting contraption. How unfitting of the man who befits a reaper, she mused.

The corners of her lips pulled up slightly as an innocent smile decorated her mask of a face. Who was she? What a question! She was background, a secondary character attempting to become part of the amalgam of chaos as fueled by her ego and her insidious subconscious. Her foot crushed the snow beneath her into a dense layer while flurries landed on her hair and shoulders, but the cold felt foreign—a numbness neither pleasant nor painful, but new and yet nostalgic of a time she had sat in a cafe, sipping a coffee and drinking in a story of reality through her eyes.

He did not wait for an answer after he saw her smile, which said all. Swinging his weapon, he ran forward with a grace that defied his intentions.

But she was not such a weak being as to let him slide past her to impale the faintly breathing creature she endeavored to protect. No. she may not have been as strong and powerful, but she was fast and more importantly, without morals. Before he had even arrived, the trap was set—ruthless and calculating and destructive. More than protecting, she craved to see the tall and erect bodies of flesh and stone turn to rubble, crumbling down around her. Perhaps protection was a guise, but she thought little of it.

She would craft her own tragedy from the one that was already beginning to implode on itself as a spectator with simply too much time on her hands.

* * *

Several years ago, too many or at least too insignificant to count, she had lived quite differently. A spineless coward, she called herself. A brave hero, others called her. But it was not as though her path of life was actively determined by her own will; she simply followed along through curiosity and the careful consideration of costs and benefits (in other words, whichever decision led to the least annoyances). Oh, how curiosity creates the best destruction.

She remembered joining the junior CCG academy, a funny ordeal of sorts but now a very distant memory. She would sit in the corner of the class, watching the interesting characters interact as though they were mindless specimen under her pressing microscope.

There was the little boy who looked like a girl, decorated in stitches and scars with a perpetually bored look on his face. She paid particular attention to the way he twirled a sharpened pencil between his fingers and how he absentmindedly picked at the strings sewn into his arms. But her pleasure and satisfaction were derived from the looks of displeasure and unease that the little boy—Rei Suzuya—evoked.

What was but a little flesh and string? They all had it didn't they? The plump looking, moist substance shielding their innards from the external environment, put together by cells or string all the same.

So she stared at Suzuya who was most certainly too oblivious and socially inept to notice or react. Everything else maintained a status of insignificance and annoyance. Particularly that man she had immediately deemed a nuisance when he stepped foot into the classroom to speak about the career of a ghoul investigator. Amon Kotarou.

The first time Amon had stepped into the classroom, her classmates were awed. She could perhaps see his intimidating physical build and the mysterious anticipation, allure, and slight fear behind the unassuming suitcase that carried, but the second that the man opened his mouth, her thoughts were confirmed.

He was a complete idiot, she concluded. No, beyond an idiot. A being with potential who has laid all of that potential to waste beneath ideals of dreaming and dead practicality. Her attention switched back to Suzuya who had decided to grace Amon with a modicum of attention, but ultimately his arm full of artistically placed stitches was of greater importance.

"The purpose of CCG investigators is to instill justice on this world. Evil cannot be excused or forgiven so leniently, especially by beings who are inherently dangerous and cruel to society,"Amon had stated.

Her eyebrow nearly twitched, but instead, as though by reflex, the corners of her mouth lifted slightly. This was the type of man she would like to watch crash and burn in a frozen, unmoving world. She wondered briefly what kind of block headed, near-indestructible wall Amon had to construct in order to allow him to continue living in such a forgiving thought. Such a one sided forgiveness would give rise to the very thing he sought to destroy.

She relished in the possible opportunity to watch his hypocritical philosophy backfire on him as he continued to march through his crusade of justice. How long would it take until that blind eye became clear? Until that clear eye was destroyed? She hoped to live long enough to tell.

But Amon was merely that: a man whose doom she could foretell and would willingly examine under her own eyes' lens. A specimen of interest.

The next man who had come into her class was different. Before his full figure had even stepped into the room, she spotted the white hair, a lightened and false version of a grey. It had irked her and an insatiable itch began to emerge within her mind and soul. Suddenly, she was very upset from an dissatisfaction she never knew that she had. It could have simply been because she disliked sharing the same sense of detachment to the world as another man, but regardless, the itch was there.

He had walked in as though no one else was there, as though he had no care for the world. When he turned to face the crowd of eager and anticipating faces, his directed gaze seemed to stare into nothing. However, the truly perplexing thing was that she could not tell if he lacked emotion that once had a permanent place, thus leaving a gaping hole, or if there was simply nothing to begin with.

"Arima Kishou. Special Class Ghoul Investigator."

She would remember his name and the blank gaze that held her attention for the briefest moment before she began to question her own resolve and desire. She would remember the toneless voice that was not bothersome but also not soothing; no, it was like the constant hum of white noise that one could continue listening to but never quite get used to.

What kind of past did Arima harbor? She wondered. What kind of future did he want? Was he simply a functioning shell of a human? Where were the cracks that she could normally so easily pick out?

Half of her found the idea of someone who was so fundamentally different intriguing. The other half of her was flooded with fear. Then again, without any notion of coward or hero, she acknowledged the fear and then discarded it like shards of information that no one uses for anything. Sharp, painful, and exciting to stumble upon after leaving them in the dark for so long.


	2. Chapter 2 Quinques and Intrigue

_The Past_

Quinques were romantic objects. They carried down a legacy of battle and dance and most of all, survival. Even detached from their source of sustenance, they seem to breathe and live like separate entities. Did kagune truly belong to ghouls? While the organs did grow from ghoul bodies, humans had been able to adapt them and turn them onto their own creators. Quinques were kagune that had forsaken their creators just as she the human had forsaken god. The human who found a purposeless, directionless world far more suitable to her own survival than the use of an entity to explain the unexplainable. If that wasn't romantic, she didn't know what was.

The quinque narrowly missed her face as she jumped aside as though it were all a well-rehearsed performance. She quickly retaliated with the training quinque in her hands, created from some unnamed, deceased ghoul's koukaku. Her movements were sharp and fierce, but not overwhelmingly strong as she sought to conserve her effort. Her opponent, an amateur trainee whom she had never bothered to remember, was not unlike a pesky fly that she swatted from her shoulder, just barely killing it because she knew it would die soon anyway. Most of the investigators-to-be were like that.

Whipping around the quinque abruptly, she changed her pace. Her once calculated and efficient movements morphed into erratic and volatile attacks. Her opponent stumbled as she dodged his quinque that nearly skidded her knees. Seeing the entire open area of his head, she lashed out with the koukaku weapon like a whip, aiming directly for his neck.

She did not take death lightly, but she had a hard time valuing outsider lives as well. Her attack towards his neck was simply that, an action as a result of her lack of-consideration. She was completely aware of the consequences, completely attune with the air vibrating off his panting breath and the moisture gathering on his brow.

But the neck itself equated to no human. The flesh was merely something she personified briefly until she determined it to be her target. Kill? Death? If that were the consequence, so be it.

"Stop!" one of the Rank 3 investigators who supervised them yelled. The words were all but water flowing in the background, welcome to disturbances and ripples.

She had no inclination to stop, but not because she derived entertainment from fighting such a mundane opponent. Rather, she imagined herself a ghoul: how would she use her quinque if it were instead her kagune, an organ and extension of herself crucial to survival? Was she naturally calculating? Or ferociously brutal and swift, leaving no time for the enemy to think? She imagined that she'd make a quite nice ghoul.

A spear like quinque soared past her head, knocking her own out of her grip.

"Enough Hakai-san," the Rank 3 investigator repeated.

She turned her head at her name and walked away from the quivering boy who seemed to have wet himself. She withdrew the quinque in her hands before snapping the suitcase shut abruptly. The sound echoed throughout the awkward silence. As though a systematic robot of a human, she stood up, leaned the suitcase next to the other training quinques, and with a small bow to her superiors left the room.

* * *

Arima relented to the conscious urge of curiosity after realizing that the benefit of satiating personal interest outweighed the cost of, well, nothing. He pulled out the pale manila folder from the class storage room and flipped it open.

 _Hakai Akane._

 _19 years old._

 _Above average test scores, but not nearly as clever as Akira Mado._

 _Proficient physical and combat skills but still a far cry from those of Suzuya Juuzou._

 _Parents killed in combat during the One-Eyed Ghoul raid._

That was the extent of the files on Hakai Akane—statistics, facts, and living status. A small image of her face in the top corner of the page stared out of the paper as though she had known who would be staring at her through the camera. The edges of her lips seemed to twitch slightly upward not in a smile but a mild smirk, too subtle to be derogatory but noticeable enough to recognize and judge for arrogance and for secrecy.

Arima could not be called friends with Hakai-san's dead and gone parents, but he had respected them as superiors. They had been senior investigators when he had started work with CCG. A few years ago, he had seen a girl tail around for some mysterious reason (although he had the hunch that she was simply bored), but it could hardly be called tailing—more like a predatory prowl meant to stake out territory. As for what that territory exactly included, he wasn't completely sure, but he had an idea. It was that idea that flagged a warning signal and mild curiosity.

Watching Hakai train against the other rather pitiable investigator from afar was like watching a bloodied flower simply stand there in the earth, a paradox of stain and purity. If he went to pick it from the earth, would it shrivel up and die? Would the blood be enough to replace the moisture? Or was it simply dead and picking it from the ground would do nothing? Arima sensed a similar feel to her as he had from Juuzou, both with dead morals. But while Juuzou's lack of emotional understanding developed from a painful past, she couldn't lack something that wasn't there to begin with. Or maybe she was simply a brilliant actress who could feign understanding and social normality, or on the flip side, feign apathy and detachment.

No matter, a flower was harmless, whether in the earth or dangling from a fist in the air, no matter how unrefined, ghastly or beautiful. He had nothing to lose, but something to gain. A killer at the least, a tool of lies at best.

So he sent in the request for a partner-apprenticeship out of formality and obligation. It would save him the annoyance of explanation to probing and nosy higher up officials, even though they knew that they couldn't do much to stop him.


	3. Chapter 3 A Destructive Red

"You will be apprenticing under Arima-san," they told her. An impersonal notification that she found conformed nicely and expectedly to what she could judge of Arima.

Akane nodded. Perhaps it was fate that was dragging her slowly out of her side character mask. But she didn't believe in fate. Even if they weren't the stars of the story, secondary characters were always able to touch the life strings of others, important or not. She accepted death from the shadows and torture from the sideline as long as there was a full view of the main course in front of her.

It was only until a week later that she met Arima in person. A stereotypically cold and unreadable person whose large figure and unassuming briefcase in his right hand made for an intimidating impression.

So Akane did what she deemed logical. She smiled a demure yet twisted smile and bowed, "It is a pleasure to meet you Arima-san."

But that was the end of the pleasantries when Arima led her down into a laboratory filled with different quinques hanging from the walls or placed in transparent cases.

"Choose one," he told her. Her eyes had already been searching and her mind had already chosen.

Soon, an organ of another being would shift its ownership to herself. The quinque would be an extension of Akane's body and by her skewed logic, she supposed she was like a ghoul who fed on human pain rather than flesh.

Her eyes fell on a pulsing katana strung up in the corner of the room. A weapon originally wielded by the noble, prideful and loyal samurai who would commit seppuku before saving their own skin from war. It was almost laughable, if it didn't disgust her so much: these warriors whose faith in others completely overwhelmed their own selves. She realized that her disgust was hypocritical, for as much as she loathed it, she found herself more and more amused by it—even if the pattern was the same, the fall was the same, the human factor was the same.

She placed her hand on the katana, feeling it pulse rapidly as though alive in her hand. The kakuhou was likely from a nameless ghoul killed by a nameless investigator, but no matter. She would give it a name and her quinque would be born from her own limbs.

Akane could feel the weapon repulse her with the same disgust she felt. She gripped the thin and elegant handle tighter. The irony glared back at her as she smirked. The katana could not mock or chastise her choice if she was already bathing in self-mockery.

She turned to face Arima, the shadow of a grin still etched on her face. He nodded as though he had confirmed something, "Try it out."

She needed no other words as her legs pushed her off of the ground and she ran at him.

It wasn't like her to initiate combat—at least not with someone of anotable name and position. She liked to linger in the backdrop, but there was something so incredibly tempting when she held the katana that she poisoned so deliciously with her own hands. In the instant that her foot left the ground in a sprint, she found herself quite conscious of a slight slip in the unperturbed, placid, and musing demeanor that she always composed.

The fact that the weapon itself abhorred impurities and malintention fostered her desire to draw blood with its blade.

Akane brought her weapon down, knowing Arima would easily block it with his own IXA. The two clashed, Arima's strength overwhelming hers as she jumped back before swinging the quinque toward Arima's left. If anything, she could account for her speed and Arima's self-imposed limitations. He wouldn't use his IXA's defensive mode; he didn't need to against a _human_ like herself. So she would play that to her advantage.

Slice.

Kick.

Swerve right and then left.

Akane narrowly dodged a vicious but elegant jab with the lance, letting a streak of blood fly across her face.

Because in that fleeting moment, she lost the iconic characteristic of a human: the survival instinct. The consequences of an organ being impaired or a limb being severed faded into some inconsequential realm as she relished in—

—what exactly did she relish in? The mockery of a katana that she flaunted around? The opportunity to dissect the underpinnings of Arima's irksome nature? Or perhaps it was far more simple: the fresh feeling of being the center of destruction rather than vicariously drinking it in from afar.

"Are you done?" Arima asked.

He had her arm pinned behind her and the point of his lance-like quinque aimed at her throat. The animal instinct of survival wormed its way back into her mind. She looked up, body losing its tenseness as she simply lay on the ground, letting go of her grip on her katana. Arima withdrew his quinque. Akane breathed.

And then she abruptly shot forward, aiming her katana straight towards Arima's heart despite the ease with which she knew he could protect himself from it. The action was not exactly unexpected, but Arima had not anticipated the eyes that he made contact with as he narrowly blocked the katana, letting it slice off a piece of fabric from his sleeve.

She fought like a ghoul, skilled but also reckless, desiring life but also sadistic. But her eyes were a kind of abysmal void, somewhat despicable and pitiable all at once. Eyes with an insatiable thirst for some image, some story that could never come to fruition unless specifically engineered.

"I believe you are done," Arima said softly. His hand gripping the blade of the katana that was aimed for his heart, a poorly thought out move on his part for practicality, but a brilliantly executed psychological move that elicited the precise effect that he desired.

The undeniably red blood dripped down the tip of Akane's blade. Her eyes followed the liquid while her mind was forced to acknowledge that her katana was no longer the symbolic object of an honorable, stupidly suicidal samurai.

She looked up straight into Arima's eyes, lifting her blade to her face.

And then to his surprise, she licked the edge of the blade. Her facial expression remained stoic, but her eyes smiled almost childishly. Whether the blade cut her tongue mattered not. Akane had elicited an amusing response on her part: perhaps unnoticeable to an untrained eye, Arima's eyes changed—to what she was unsure of, but there was a distinct difference between that of his normal, seemingly apathetic orbs and the churning, perhaps stormy ones that Akane witnessed for an ephemeral second.


	4. Chapter 4 Cannibal

The event was in Akane's files, but it was brief and detached as any report was meant to be. It mentioned the times that the CCG had come into rescue the child, the number of casualties, the type of ghoul, but not the details that happened in between the indisputable facts. The remaining bits and pieces found themselves preserved in one single mind, perhaps the least reliable mind. That did not mean others did not suspect anything. But Arima was too busy wearing an unperturbed face while slaughtering ghouls to probe.

* * *

Silence was optimal, but as always, it was impossible. As a child, Akane kept to herself, absentmindedly drawing her pencil across her paper in long, deep lines that smudged when she pressed her finger against them, or carving away at a small piece of wood. Arts and crafts consumed her boredom. She asked for little else.

She deconstructed her narrow confines of silence, a mind barrier that restrained her in a wave of lethargy. There was no real reason or catalyst. Perhaps the soft but repetitive sound of carving wood sculptures was soothing. The blade was rusted and browned, but it did not chip. As she carved a shape, her dexterous hands positioned the wood at an angle. She pressed down, increasing her strength when the knife would not go through.

Up until this time, Akane was always conscious of her abnormal fascination with pain. She had developed a deep loathing towards romanticized stories, real or fake, about those who risked torture and pain for a morally greater task. Logically, she had conjectured, many more people would succumb to torture. She had not found this human tendency despicable, which was why she had tried to embrace it. If a knife were carved into her stomach, she would surrender easily—so she had thought.

Akane wasn't one to smooth over the facets of humanity; she preferred to shake out the depravity with her own two hands and watch it squirm on the ground.

Her parents were ghoul investigators who reeked of an upstanding, hypocritical morality. They killed ghouls. They went up in rank. They killed more ghouls. They further advanced in rank. At the time, although Akane was unaware of the particular hierarchy of ranks, she certainly knew that her parents were senior investigators.

But in that very moment as she sat in the living room and continued to peel away at the wood in her hands, absentmindedly keeping count of the splinters that entered her fingers; Akane's parents were merely a dutiful mother and father cooking in a kitchen with a vindictive and determined rinkaku type ghoul on their trail.

When her exacto knife skidded across the surface of the wood and sliced gently across her skin, she mused how little it hurt. Self-inflicted wounds had always been foreign to her and pain an distant ideal. She almost laughed.

The main door of her house crashed open. The first thing she saw was an enormous, charred red, tentacle-like kagune spear through the large distance from the destroyed door to her stomach.

Akane coughed, letting blood dribble down her chin. "It," she coughed out, "—hurts." And indeed she found that her sensation of pain met an extreme that far exceeded that of a knife slicing her palm. But the strongest impact of pain only met her nerves for a moment before it subsided into a dull fascination.

"Akane!" her mother screamed at the noise. Reaching for her quinque, she snapped open the briefcase and released a bikaku made quinque, tearing the tentacle away from her daughter.

The ghoul itself was a tall man whose face was twisted far too much to decipher his age. He cackled, "Didn't know there was a miniature one of you."

The ghoul launched himself into the room using his rinkaku like springs. The tentacles rampaged around the room, cracking window glass and smashing furniture. "I've come to eat back every single limb that you cut from this body!"

Akane's father bent down to hold her still from swaying. Had she been swaying? "Akane, I know it hurts, but you need to run. Run out through the back window. You won't need to endure it for too long, the CCG should be on their way," he told her quickly. "Mommy and daddy will take care of things here."

Akane stumbled at first, gaining her balance while watching her father attack the ghoul with his own quinque. She held her arm tightly across her stomach as the blood seeped through her fingers. She ran.

Beyond the uneven sound of her footsteps, the splashing of blood that hit the hardwood, the female and male screams that broke through the air, Akane found the smooth, low laughter of the ghoul to stand out from the rest, like the spider lily among carnations. She gripped the edge of the window, attempting to lift it up above her shoulders with a single hand as the other contained her bloodied torso.

"Why in such a hurry?" a voice echoed down the hall. "I hope you weren't thinking about leaving your parents here." Before Akane saw the distorted face, she saw the rinkaku, more reminiscent of a red spider lily's petals than ever. It wrapped around her neck and dragged her back to the destroyed kitchen painted in splotches of red.

The first thing she noticed was that her unfinished wood sculpture still stood on the table dutifully next to her exacto knife. Her eye then fell to the two bodies strewn across the ground in pieces. An arm with a small studded diamond wedding ring was located uncomfortably close below her as she was held in the air.

"Well, what do you think of my decorations?" the ghoul said eying an unrecognizable face that adorned a head nearly detached from the rest of the body. "Not unlike what they did to my friends and me. It's almost a shame that I have to eat this masterpiece. This sweet vengeance." He licked his lips as she struggled to breathe.

Akane wondered if this was what death would feel like: a slow, unnoticed struggle that ended silently to a ghoul's psychotic monologue. The kagune against her skin seemed to burn. "You are," she coughed, "hungry?"

The ghoul flung her to the side as her back crashed into a broken table, tearing at her clothes. He eyes filled with amusement, "Hungry? I don't have to be hungry to eat humans."

The ghoul's statement catalyzed a chain of questions Akane's brain. "For fun?" she whispered, to weak from blood loss to raise her voice.

"For something far more than fun. For pain, torture, and revenge for the ghoul lives your parents ruined with their masks of justice," he replied. "There would be nothing more pleasing than to see the spawn of those investigators break their disgusting ideals."

He picked up the arm, letting the wedding ring slip off, and tore off the index finger with his teeth, chewing conspicuously. When Akane heard the crack and crunch of the bone, she failed to hold in a grimace. The ghoul looked up, grinning with the self-satisfaction that can only come from creative accomplishment. He tossed the remaining part of the arm to her.

"I bet your parents would be _ecstatic_ to see their precious child, the one they raised under their moral, upright ideals," he paused for effect and chewed on the moist flesh, letting the muscle and his saliva drip down the corner of his mouth. "—act like a lowly ghoul. But wait, it'd be even better! Because it wouldn't be just anyone. No, it'd have to be the _human_ child eating its _human_ parents." He laughed, descending deeper and deeper into lunacy that Akane imagined had once been rooted in logic (at least, enough logic to desire revenge).

The rinkaku was positioned close to her neck threateningly. While Akane had no intention in indulging the crazy ghoul's sadistic impulses, she could not help but question his assumption. Was being a human cannibal so bad? Didn't praying mantises devour their mates and hamster mothers eat their young?

A siren sounded and Akane deduced that the CCG was outside of her house. She could probably wait it out and focus the ghoul's attention on a petty conversation about his revenge. But the curiosity and urge within her were becoming tumors, determined to take over her body's functions. She heard footsteps nearing the porch.

She snatched the arm and sank her small teeth into it. The flesh was surprisingly tough but still warm. It tasted revolting, as any raw, uncleaned meat would. But it certainly didn't feel emotionally evocative and if she were a ghoul, it would definitely taste better.

The ghoul's eyes widened slightly, his laughing smile on his face frozen like a portrait, "You. You actually ate…? Don't you care about your family?"

She tossed her head back and coughed again. Eating with an impaled stomach didn't suit her at all. And yet, she _wanted_ to eat. Because she wasn't the heroic CCG investigator, or the crazed and evil ghoul, or even the human martyr who died as a ghoul's meal. She was just a human girl—a cannibalistic parasite, painlessly leeching on other's blood and her own life.

"This is the CCG. Surrender now or we cannot promise a swift death!"

However deep down, as an overly enthusiastic investigator with one over-sized, bulging eye and a hunched back swept in with a quinque, promptly impaling the ghoul, she knew that he had come a second later than necessary to save her had she not eaten the flesh. She'd be the bloodied corpse who refused to eat human (it would make an amusing epitaph though).

It was hardly a conflict of values. Survival versus an act of eating something unpleasant. Quenching curiosity versus upholding some set of socially imposed morals where society was nowhere to judge.

Indeed, she found it very necessary to remind herself that she was a coward.


	5. Chapter 5 Cornered

Water droplets fell to the bottom of the rusty sink rhythmically and the sound echoed around the the walls of the abandoned storage house. Akane withdrew her quinque from the ghoul's chest where it had been lodged narrowly piercing the heart. Despite a ghoul's typically rapid healing, this one had been decapitated from limb to limb. And her mission, like all of the others, was to capture and bring the ghoul back alive.

Even though she was supposed to be training under Arima's supervision, she had not received any direct instruction besides the first time she received her katana. Arima had simply left her alone until their first mission to track down (and eliminate) a suspected ghoul working as a cashier in a grocery store. The mission had proceeded smoothly, as though nothing had ever transpired between the two investigators. In fact, Akane found their methods incredibly compatible and efficient. And that fact made her childishly more annoyed at the special class investigator. So on the few occasions that she had easy, solo missions, she avoided the path of efficiency as much as possible.

The ghoul still bleeding at the chest and limbs groaned, fading in and out of consciousness. Akane stared down at the ghoul, slightly in curiosity but more because she couldn't bear to turn her head towards the CCG members who came to collect the body. She crouched down to the ghoul whose eyes still managed to crack open, absorbing the light. And whispered into its ear.

From afar, the other investigators and inspection crew saw Akane's gesture but most of them who were accustomed to her idiosyncrasies wrote it off as some trivial behavior in personal bad taste. The newer members were slightly more taken aback. From their angle, it seemed as though she had _kissed_ the ghoul.

"Rank 2 Hakai-san, we will be taking over from here. You may return to headquarters," the man leading the clean up crew told her.

Akane offered no response, walking her way back alone. The CCG paid no further attention to her either, likely preoccupied with the mess she had made and the unconventional present or more accurately, _surprise_ that she had left behind. She wished that she could see their reactions, but to turn her head back to the scene behind her—she didn't want to peg herself as someone who lived in the past. Or more accurately, the future.

* * *

When Akane was summoned to Arima's office, she was hardly surprised. If anything, she likened her feelings to anticipation and a burning, cannibalistic curiosity.

"Hakai-san, were you aware that the location you left the half dead body in yesterday was a ghoul nest?" he asked her with the same calculating and devoid face.

"I was aware," she said.

"Were you also aware that half of our men were killed in an ambush last night at that very place?"

Akane briefly wondered how the other half survived. "I was not aware. The ghouls around that area typically hunt at night and are not all gathered together there at that specific time."

"Your mission was to secure the area, not lead a crew of investigators who were not meant for combat to their deaths," Arima said, drumming his fingers lightly on his desk while staring at Akane in the eyes.

She stared back.

"My mission was to identify and decapitate the ghoul under suspicion. It is impractical to send a single investigator, nevertheless a Rank 2, to eliminate an entire nest," she responded smoothly. And she was right. Both knew it. Akane hid behind the bureaucratic shield of words and technicalities.

"A human life might not be worth much to you, but as long as you work for the CCG, it is part of your job to save them," Arima stated. "I will be placing your solo missions on standstill. Your next job will be in the normal pairing with me in the second ward. Read up on the case."

He handed her a file. She took it in her hands, bowed briefly, and left the office.

She briefly mourned the loss of her solo missions, but hardly. It amused her to no end that someone like the almighty reaper Arima who was known to simply get the job done regardless of rules would tell her something like that. But at the same time, Akane found herself lost in what exactly she was doing. What had been her reason for leaving the CCG crew in a ghoul's nest? Why had she whispered to the ghoul to call his friends to say goodbye? The missing rationale that stuck with her for that single instant was long cast into a pit of oblivion.

And as much as Akane found the lack of reasoning unimportant and relished in the chain reactions she sparked, she disliked the wandering, aimlessness that was creeping into her. The pedestal was still beyond her reach.

It wasn't often that she was caught up with her solipsistic mindset (she liked to think she didn't have one), but the light pitter-patters of rain and constant thuds from her feet as she walked backed to her apartment complex lent themselves well getting lost in the cave of her mind. What better, she thought, then to get some coffee and squander time away. She had no mission and she was not so stupid and superficial as to antagonize a random ghoul who would land her in trouble with the very person she truly wished to dissect.

Time was for entertainment, and if entertainment entailed "wasting time", so be it. Akane opened the door to the small cafe and the strong smell of coffee instantly overwhelmed her.

"Welcome!" an old man by the counter said to her. Akane dipped her head in acknowledgment.

But it was when she completely took in her surroundings that she had some serious reconsiderations. Secondary character? A mere bud compared to the full bloom? Akane smiled delicately, an expression crossed between one holding the greatest inside joke and a trivial gesture of politeness.

Akane did not believe in fate. She believed in herself, her instinct, and most of all, her judgment. So when she heard the old man's standard pleasantries, the young waiter with the eye patch call out to someone named "Touka", "Touka"s pissed off response, and the silent, tense undertones, Akane abandoned her initial plan to order a coffee to-go and instead sat down.

Ghouls didn't blend in that easily with humans. Or perhaps the more accurate way of phrasing it was, ghouls blended in as well as she did with society. Akane had no way of knowing whether or not she was correct, but regardless she would relish in watching the slow weathering of someone as—lively? idealistic? absurdly stubborn and altruistic?—as the eye patch waiter.

How many times can you break a human? Once.

How many times can you break a ghoul? Akane wasn't sure, but the answer was clearly more than once.


End file.
